This Unspeakable War
"This Unspeakable War" was the 19th Special Comment delivered on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, airing on 23 May 2007. The Comment And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment about the Democrats deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq, and to do so on his terms. It is, in fact, a comment about betrayal. Few men or women elected in our history, whether executive or legislative, state or national, have been sent into an office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear; get us out of Iraq. Yet after six months of preparation and execution, half a year gathering the strands of public support, translating into action the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this war of lies, the Democrats have managed only this: the Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president, if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish in our history, who happily blackmails his own people and uses his own military personnel as hostages, to his asinine demand that the Democrats give the troops their money. The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans. The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government. The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the administration in which the only things truly compromised are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave and doomed friends and family in Iraq. You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions, stop the war, have traded your strength, your bargaining position and the uniform support of those who elected you for a handful of magic beans. You may trot out every political cliche from the soft soap inside the beltway dictionary of boiler plate sound bites about how this is the beginning of the end of Mr. Bush's carte blanche, about how this is the first step. Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning is our collective hope that you and your colleagues will do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected or reelected to do. Because this first step is a step right off a cliff. And this president, how shameful it would be to watch an adult hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so until he turned blue. How horrifying it is to watch a president hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm's way are bled white. You lead this country, sir? You claim to defend it? And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness, your stubbornness, which has cost a 3,431 Americans their lives, and thousands more their limbs, you, Mr. Bush., imply that if the Democrats don't give you the money, and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops would be stranded or forced to serve longer or what, have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands? It is moronic. We have defunded wars before, sir, and this is not even close to a true defunding. No harm has come to our troops. How transcendently, how historically pathetic. Any other president from any other moment in a panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would ensure personally, first last and always, that the troops would not suffer. A president, Mr. Bush, uses the carte blanche he already has not to manipulate and overlap arriving and departing brigades into a second surge, but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the money already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe, even if the only safety to be found is in getting them the hell out of there. Well any true president would have done that, sir. You, instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so. Not that these Democrats, who had this country's support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not earned all of the blame they can carry home. We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame, Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich Accords with Germany in 1938. "My feeling is that we shall choose shame and then have war thrown in a little later." That's what this is for the Democrats, isn't it, their Neville Chamberlain moment before the second world war. All that is missing is the landing at the airport with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper, which he naively thought would guarantee peace in our time, but which his opponent would ignore with deceit. The Democrats have merely streamlined the process. Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it with impunity. But where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening? See they not that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself? Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization or waiting for apologies for those votes, that is ancient history now. The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided tomorrow, but talk of practical politics, the buying into the president's dishonest construction, fund the troops or they will be in jeopardy, the promise of tougher action in September is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do and now perceive your ears as deaf, as closed to practical politics. Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to, for their own political futures, and 1,000 times more solemnity and importance for the individual futures of our troops, denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a mono-maniacal president. For ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us. Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer and the other Democrats have failed us. They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect, our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen war of lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible. Mr. Bush and his government have failed us. They have behaved venomously and without dignity, of course. That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted. We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here. With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have, so far at least, failed us. They must now speak and make plain how they view what has been given to Mr. Bush and what is yet to be given away tomorrow and in the thousand tomorrows still to come, because for the next 14 months, the Democratic nominating process, indeed the whole of our political discourse, until further notice, has, with the stroke of a cursive pen, become about one thing and one thing alone, the electorate figured this out six months ago. The president and Republicans have not, doubtless will not. The Democrats will figure it out during the Memorial Day recess when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest that they stay there and permanently. Because on the subject of Iraq, the people have been ahead of the media, ahead of the government, ahead of the politicians for the last year or two years or maybe three. Our politics is now about the answer to one briefly worded question: Mr. Bush has failed. Mr. Warner has failed. Mr. Reid has failed. So, who among us will stop this war, this war of lies? To he or she fall the figurative keys to the nation. To all the others, presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and senators of either party, there's only blame for the shameful and bipartisan betrayal. See Also Category:2007 Special Comments